Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
freshwest
freshwest's Journal
freshwest's Journal
December 12, 2012
I'm sure they did... Also had some trouble with media and the ground game.
One of our MI union members said he begged some of his co-workers to not vote for Sydner. It was likely a minority, but could have swayed the voter. They believed him when he said he would not do what he just did, during the campaign.
But history shows the GOP attacked labor for many years. Even if they had had the record of not attacking specfic unions, their political philosophy is against the social safety and upward mobility that unions work to create. Their allegiance to big business and profit, is incompatible with the interest of labor in principle.
Especially when taken to its extreme, as the GOP has. They have fought all regulations, including those that held employers in check. The media and churches unfortunately have literally made capitalism a religion whose tenets may not be questioned.
When it gets out of hand, and factories are closed for the profit of the shareholders and CEOs, the workers are shamed and pushed aside. The economic situation in Michigan is not the result of unions, but corporate greed. As Springsteen said in his song'Youngstown':
'Now sir you tell me the world's changed
Once I made you rich enough
Rich enough to forget my name'
The workers made these owners extremely wealthy. So rich they now think of themselves as kings, and should own everything. Michigan is in big trouble and they are working to extend this nationally. WI has won some victories in this, but we hear little from them now, although they are still working through the system to change things. The big money is up against us in a way that they haven't been able in over a hundred years and this is a very dangerous time for us.
December 12, 2012
Multigenerational political influence by a very narrow special interest group is rare, but we're seeing it played out right now in front of us. A billionaire family - the Kochs - have gone from influencing my father's generation, to my generation, to my kids' generation - and very few Americans realize it. Daddy Koch - Fred - made his first millions palling around with Joe Stalin in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s. As the fascists rose to power in Europe in the 1930s, he was an enthusiastic supporter of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, who invented the word "fascist," meaning essentially the takeover of democratic governments by big business interests. Mussolini went so far as to dissolve the Italian parliament, and replace elected politicians with representatives of each district's largest corporations. Fred Koch and Mussolini both particularly hated the trade unionists and their sometimes allies, the communists. So after Mussolini, along with his ally Hitler, lost World War II against America, Fred Koch brought the anti-communist pro-business-running-goverment - what some would call "facist" - torch to America big time, helping start the John Birch Society.
Two of their biggest efforts are pretty well known. After the Supreme Court ruled, in 1954, in the Brown versus Board of Education case, that segregation in schools was unconstitutional, the John Birch Society put up billboards all across America calling for the impeachment of the Chief Justice of the Court, Earl Warren. Daddy Fred Koch was very concerned about the integration of our schools - in fact, he wrote, "The colored man looms large in the Communist plan to take over America." With JFK's election, Fred Koch's John Birch Society went off again - this time against JFK. Using rhetoric not that different from the "secret Muslim" plots the Tea Party promotes about Obama, in a 1963 speech Fred said that " infiltrate the highest offices of government in the U.S. until the President is a Communist, unknown to the rest of us.”
When JFK was scheduled to come to Dallas that year, the JBS distributed flyers saying, "Wanted, for Treason" all around the town two days before his arrival. On the day JFK was assassinated, large ads ran in the Dallas newspapers attacking Kennedy as being soft on Castro, among other things. That was my dad's generation. Daddy Koch died, and his sons Charles and David took over the family business of promoting the business and billionaire takeover of our American government.
They're doing it with a two-pronged attack. For people over forty, they're funding the Tea Party through a variety of groups, most notably Americans for Prosperity and Freedomworks. And for people under forty, they're funding Libertarian think tanks, like the Charles Koch Foundation (which was renamed as the Cato Institute), and the Reason Foundation, where David Koch is a trustee, which happily embraces a new generation of young people with the idea that "freedom" means the "freedom" to buy politicians and the "freedom" to pollute. For the young people, of course, the Libertarians throw in the "freedom" to smoke dope and hire a hooker, but those are just bones being cynically tossed to young potheads and young protoge's of Dick Morris.
But the Koch's have been inside the Libertarian movement from its beginning - 32 years ago this year, David Koch was the Libertarian Party's official candidate for Vice President of the United States. It's really pretty incredible, but it's all true. The main agenda of the Koch's John Birch Society was to enhance the power and control of our government by big business and billionaires, while fighting organized labor and people like me who were protesting the Vietnam War. The main agenda of the Koch's Tea Party is to get millionaires elected to Congress and have them cut taxes and regulations for Koch Industries and other polluting corporations, while fighting organized labor and people like me who were protesting the Iraq War.
And the main agenda of the Koch's Libertarians - again, funded and trained by the Koch Brothers - is to keep intact the power of big money over our government, cut taxes and regulations on billionaires and polluting industries, while fighting organized labor and people like me who are protesting the corporate takeover of the United States of America. Three generations of Americans, all duped by the same billionaire family. Three generations buying into the idea that "what's best for industry and billionaires is best for America" - and that government is our "enemy" rather than something that our nation's founders fought and died to create for all of "We The People" And, increasingly, it's not just the Koch family. The Walton family - whose combined wealth is greater than 40 percent of all Americans - funded a covert campaign to rename the estate tax as the "death tax" and lobbied so hard they got the estate tax eliminated entirely in 2010.
Senator Bernie Sanders pointed out yesterday that - so far - we know of 26 billionaires - worth over $146 billion - who have already "invested" or committed to invest over $561 million dollars in this election cycle - most of it to defeat Democrats who want to raise their taxes. The good news is that young people are waking up and realizing that the Libertarian hustle the billionaires are feeding them is just that - a hustle. Just like Tea Partiers are waking up to their having been had by billionaires who want to privatize their Social Security. Hopefully, soon, America will regain its sanity and we'll go back to viewing cranky billionaires the way my Dad's generation did - as Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower did - when Eisenhower referred to their ilk as "small in number and stupid" They're not stupid any more, and if we really value American traditions, we really must push back on this kind of power and influence in American politics...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/101744227
That's the transcript of the video, for those on dial-up, complete. For those on broadband, you can watch the video by going to the DU link above.
Read this by Thom Hartmann. The relationships are closer than one might think:
Thom Hartmann: Conservative Millennials, Boomers & Libertarians all being ConnedMultigenerational political influence by a very narrow special interest group is rare, but we're seeing it played out right now in front of us. A billionaire family - the Kochs - have gone from influencing my father's generation, to my generation, to my kids' generation - and very few Americans realize it. Daddy Koch - Fred - made his first millions palling around with Joe Stalin in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s. As the fascists rose to power in Europe in the 1930s, he was an enthusiastic supporter of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, who invented the word "fascist," meaning essentially the takeover of democratic governments by big business interests. Mussolini went so far as to dissolve the Italian parliament, and replace elected politicians with representatives of each district's largest corporations. Fred Koch and Mussolini both particularly hated the trade unionists and their sometimes allies, the communists. So after Mussolini, along with his ally Hitler, lost World War II against America, Fred Koch brought the anti-communist pro-business-running-goverment - what some would call "facist" - torch to America big time, helping start the John Birch Society.
Two of their biggest efforts are pretty well known. After the Supreme Court ruled, in 1954, in the Brown versus Board of Education case, that segregation in schools was unconstitutional, the John Birch Society put up billboards all across America calling for the impeachment of the Chief Justice of the Court, Earl Warren. Daddy Fred Koch was very concerned about the integration of our schools - in fact, he wrote, "The colored man looms large in the Communist plan to take over America." With JFK's election, Fred Koch's John Birch Society went off again - this time against JFK. Using rhetoric not that different from the "secret Muslim" plots the Tea Party promotes about Obama, in a 1963 speech Fred said that " infiltrate the highest offices of government in the U.S. until the President is a Communist, unknown to the rest of us.”
When JFK was scheduled to come to Dallas that year, the JBS distributed flyers saying, "Wanted, for Treason" all around the town two days before his arrival. On the day JFK was assassinated, large ads ran in the Dallas newspapers attacking Kennedy as being soft on Castro, among other things. That was my dad's generation. Daddy Koch died, and his sons Charles and David took over the family business of promoting the business and billionaire takeover of our American government.
They're doing it with a two-pronged attack. For people over forty, they're funding the Tea Party through a variety of groups, most notably Americans for Prosperity and Freedomworks. And for people under forty, they're funding Libertarian think tanks, like the Charles Koch Foundation (which was renamed as the Cato Institute), and the Reason Foundation, where David Koch is a trustee, which happily embraces a new generation of young people with the idea that "freedom" means the "freedom" to buy politicians and the "freedom" to pollute. For the young people, of course, the Libertarians throw in the "freedom" to smoke dope and hire a hooker, but those are just bones being cynically tossed to young potheads and young protoge's of Dick Morris.
But the Koch's have been inside the Libertarian movement from its beginning - 32 years ago this year, David Koch was the Libertarian Party's official candidate for Vice President of the United States. It's really pretty incredible, but it's all true. The main agenda of the Koch's John Birch Society was to enhance the power and control of our government by big business and billionaires, while fighting organized labor and people like me who were protesting the Vietnam War. The main agenda of the Koch's Tea Party is to get millionaires elected to Congress and have them cut taxes and regulations for Koch Industries and other polluting corporations, while fighting organized labor and people like me who were protesting the Iraq War.
And the main agenda of the Koch's Libertarians - again, funded and trained by the Koch Brothers - is to keep intact the power of big money over our government, cut taxes and regulations on billionaires and polluting industries, while fighting organized labor and people like me who are protesting the corporate takeover of the United States of America. Three generations of Americans, all duped by the same billionaire family. Three generations buying into the idea that "what's best for industry and billionaires is best for America" - and that government is our "enemy" rather than something that our nation's founders fought and died to create for all of "We The People" And, increasingly, it's not just the Koch family. The Walton family - whose combined wealth is greater than 40 percent of all Americans - funded a covert campaign to rename the estate tax as the "death tax" and lobbied so hard they got the estate tax eliminated entirely in 2010.
Senator Bernie Sanders pointed out yesterday that - so far - we know of 26 billionaires - worth over $146 billion - who have already "invested" or committed to invest over $561 million dollars in this election cycle - most of it to defeat Democrats who want to raise their taxes. The good news is that young people are waking up and realizing that the Libertarian hustle the billionaires are feeding them is just that - a hustle. Just like Tea Partiers are waking up to their having been had by billionaires who want to privatize their Social Security. Hopefully, soon, America will regain its sanity and we'll go back to viewing cranky billionaires the way my Dad's generation did - as Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower did - when Eisenhower referred to their ilk as "small in number and stupid" They're not stupid any more, and if we really value American traditions, we really must push back on this kind of power and influence in American politics...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/101744227
That's the transcript of the video, for those on dial-up, complete. For those on broadband, you can watch the video by going to the DU link above.
December 12, 2012
AFP has been accused of funding astroturf operations but also has been fueling the "Tea Party" efforts. [1] AFP's messages are in sync with those of other groups funded by the Koch Family Foundations and the Koch's other special interest groups that work against progressive or Democratic initiatives and protections for workers and the environment.
Accordingly, AFP opposes labor unions, health care reform, stimulus spending, and cap-and-trade legislation, which is aimed at making industries pay for the air pollution that they create. AFP was also involved in the attacks on Obama’s "green jobs" czar, Van Jones, and has crusaded against international climate talks.
According to an article in the August 30, 2010 issue of The New Yorker, the Kochs are known for "creating slippery organizations with generic-sounding names," that "make it difficult to ascertain the extent of their influence in Washington."
AFP's budget surged from $7 million in 2007 to $40 million in 2010, an election year. [2][3]. As of August 13th, Americans for Prosperity spent an estimated $45 million on ads to influence the 2012 presidential election, their total budget for 2012 will top $100 million. [4]
For a more detailed summary of AFP's 2012 election activities, see: Americans for Prosperity in the 2012 Election.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Americans_for_Prosperity_in_the_2012_Election
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_for_Prosperity
No, it was the right question. He cut to the chase and the stooge knew he'd been exposed:
Americans for Prosperity (AFP) is a group fronting special interests started by oil billionaire David Koch and Richard Fink (a member of the board of directors of Koch Industries).AFP has been accused of funding astroturf operations but also has been fueling the "Tea Party" efforts. [1] AFP's messages are in sync with those of other groups funded by the Koch Family Foundations and the Koch's other special interest groups that work against progressive or Democratic initiatives and protections for workers and the environment.
Accordingly, AFP opposes labor unions, health care reform, stimulus spending, and cap-and-trade legislation, which is aimed at making industries pay for the air pollution that they create. AFP was also involved in the attacks on Obama’s "green jobs" czar, Van Jones, and has crusaded against international climate talks.
According to an article in the August 30, 2010 issue of The New Yorker, the Kochs are known for "creating slippery organizations with generic-sounding names," that "make it difficult to ascertain the extent of their influence in Washington."
AFP's budget surged from $7 million in 2007 to $40 million in 2010, an election year. [2][3]. As of August 13th, Americans for Prosperity spent an estimated $45 million on ads to influence the 2012 presidential election, their total budget for 2012 will top $100 million. [4]
For a more detailed summary of AFP's 2012 election activities, see: Americans for Prosperity in the 2012 Election.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Americans_for_Prosperity_in_the_2012_Election
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_for_Prosperity
December 10, 2012
'Us' being the alleged taxpayer and 'Them' being the government, and by default, public jobs such as teaching. Until we can get past this false boogeyman in the minds of the voters, which FDR didn't have to fight as we do with media, we can't get the virtue of those jobs being paid for tax dollars through.
Democrats and those who lived under Keynesian economics in the past, know that this works and increases security and prosperity. It comes from the ideal that we are all in this together.
We are dying from the spiritual impoverishment of half the nation who believe public professions of faith replace the deeper spiritual values that transcend all division, is sufficient. That's why they call Democrats, secularists, public schools and the like godless, because we don't try to force the world to submit to their version of God. But if their God was Love, would He ignore the millions doing without, as the GOP has done?
The movie said, 'Houston, we have a problem.' And it is just as fatal as the one the astronauts faced. We have a meme to overcome in this country. It's an uphill battle, over what most of us grew up and took for granted as sane American public policy.
I haven't been able to cajole the brainswashed, and it's permeated society as a whole. Obama is doing this gradually to change public perception, but it's too slow and he has little support. But we can push it here and in Congress... the media, no.
Sorry if that seems to go too far afield, I support what you say in the OP a hundred percent.
Our problem is wingnut media bloviating about public sector jobs. Each time we say that...
too many see it as and 'us' versus 'them.''Us' being the alleged taxpayer and 'Them' being the government, and by default, public jobs such as teaching. Until we can get past this false boogeyman in the minds of the voters, which FDR didn't have to fight as we do with media, we can't get the virtue of those jobs being paid for tax dollars through.
Democrats and those who lived under Keynesian economics in the past, know that this works and increases security and prosperity. It comes from the ideal that we are all in this together.
We are dying from the spiritual impoverishment of half the nation who believe public professions of faith replace the deeper spiritual values that transcend all division, is sufficient. That's why they call Democrats, secularists, public schools and the like godless, because we don't try to force the world to submit to their version of God. But if their God was Love, would He ignore the millions doing without, as the GOP has done?
The movie said, 'Houston, we have a problem.' And it is just as fatal as the one the astronauts faced. We have a meme to overcome in this country. It's an uphill battle, over what most of us grew up and took for granted as sane American public policy.
I haven't been able to cajole the brainswashed, and it's permeated society as a whole. Obama is doing this gradually to change public perception, but it's too slow and he has little support. But we can push it here and in Congress... the media, no.
Sorry if that seems to go too far afield, I support what you say in the OP a hundred percent.
Profile Information
Member since: Fri Dec 10, 2010, 11:36 PMNumber of posts: 53,661
